Thursday, 12 August 2010

Monsterpocalypse Conversion: Sculpting Claws

I got myself a shark monster from Ebay to go with my (still in transit) Karks. The firest thing I noticed was that the newer Monpoc figures are painted a lot worse than the earlier ones I bought.
The more I looked at the hands on this guy though, the less I liked them.
I decided to try sculpting my own claws to replace the ones on the model. The paint was so thick I decided not to try over-painting or stripping the model and just went straight to the "Ultra" form that it comes with.. Which is the same model without the paint.

The first thing I did was cut off the offending long claws and webbing. After a bit of carving the plastic, I drilled and inserted pins into the stumps to give the greenstuff something to hold onto. I got a pin-vise from the local hardware store for about £3 (a reminder of how crazily overpriced GW tools are) and used paperclip for the pins.

At first I tried pushing a blob of putty onto the wire then shaping it into a claw.
This was very difficult to do because of the elastic nature of the putty. when I'd done 4 claws I suddenly realized that it would be easier to shape the claws independently, and then cut off the excess before drilling and pinning.

The "middle finger" claw is the one I made as decribed above.
In the light of day, I think my mistake was trying to sculpt the claws in one hit. I could have got a better result by roughly sculpting "cores" to each claw, then when it had hardened adding more putty for the final shape.